Just a Start...

As I sat in my booth-for-two slowly doing away with my peppermint stick on a sugar cone, three things happened. I came to accept that in less that 48 hours, I would be a freshman in high school, my ice cream promptly fell down the front of my shirt, and time stopped for five very strange minutes. I felt as though I was standing on the outside of a fast moving, never-ending, unforgiving stream that was life at its simplest. It did not stop, it did not make exceptions. Now standing in my little booth, napkins clutched to my chest, I looked around me and saw people moving past me, as unaware of my presence as I was intimately aware of theirs. In this never-ending stream that is life, I saw that living without a life to enjoy was not only the worst thing one could do, but a proverbial kicking-of-the-bucket. Without a single thing to live for, what have you got to lose? Accepting that I must have been in a dream-like state, I simply let my thoughts carry me away. As I followed my dream along, I saw people born and I saw people die and I wondered if, had those people been born any earlier or later, would they have known each other? What great love is lost between these generations?
Returning to a more passive dreamer state, I again simply let my dream take me where it willed me to go and found myself seated next to a young man in a little car, making his way on a back-road at some hour of the night. As we came around a sharp corner, I was immediately confronted by bright headlights approaching in the same lane as the young man was in.
“Turn, Turn!”, I screamed but this was not my memory to interfere in and realized that no matter how loud, or how much, I screamed, the boy would not hear me. Though I was sure I did not want to see what was almost inevitably going to happen in the next 10 seconds, I couldn't bear to close my eyes. If I didn't see this boy's last seconds, who would?
Willing myself to watch, I saw the driver swerve a little bit in his SUV and then adjust just enough to hit our little Civic head on. Forced back by his seat belt and assaulted with the force of his airbag, the boy's body went suddenly from rigid to limp. I screamed. I cried. And I knew that though nothing would be heard and my crying wasn't helping, I could do nothing to stop it. I slid out of the newly crumpled passenger side door and made my way over to the driver's side of the enormous SUV, furious and unconsoleably sad all at once. Peering through the window, I saw the face of an obviously drunk man, glassy-eyed with his jaw hanging open. Suddenly he put his car in reverse, then in drive, and began to motor unsteadily-but very quickly away.
“What the hell do you think you're doing?!”, I shouted at him.
“You just hit a kid, and the best idea you can come up with is driving away?”
Incredulous and knowing that my cries were falling-quite literally-upon deaf ears, I stared for a few seconds as the man drove away and then returned to the side of my boy. Bleeding from his ears and mouth, ribs probably broken, and yet with the first aid training I had worked so hard to get, I couldn't help him. I wondered what plan God had for this boy and his family. Why did anyone have to die in such a terrible way? And why was the drunk driver not being held responsible? Why wasn't he the one in critical condition? Why was this boy so cruelly robbed of what this life has to offer?
Suddenly I was furious with whatever force had brought me into this dream. Why was I here? Why would I be put here if I could do nothing but stand idly by with all the tools necessary to help this boy and yet rendered totally helpless by the fact that I did not actually exist in this time, in this place. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1 over and over but I got no ring to indicate that I was being put through. I reached out to touch the boy but knew that whatever I did wouldn't help.
Thinking of nothing else to do to help, I knelt down and pleaded with God for this boy's life. I wouldn't let myself be completely useless, if I couldn't help him physically, at least I could ask God to. 'Please, God, don't let this boy leave this world tonight, one more night, one more chance, one more breath.'
I stood up and walked back over to the car. The bleeding had slowed and I knew that if he went much longer without help, he wouldn't make it through the night. Breathing raggedly but steadily, my boy was suffering but not concious enough to feel the worst of it. Reaching in to feel his pulse, I was suddenly and cruelly reminded that I did not exist and therefore could not feel. Left with nothing else to do, I stood by the side of the car and continued to pray for this boy's life.
Standing there, praying, I felt a curious pull and found myself seated next to the man who I had seen in the obnoxious SUV which had just hit my boy. It was something like eight o'clock at night and this man already had three empty pints sitting next to him. Engaged in conversation with an equally if not more drunk man seated a couple bar stools over, I watched him in the course of four hours consume four more pints and three shots. He waved an unsteady good-bye to the bartender and his friend, picked up his jacket and stumbled out the door. Walking the fifty feet to his car, he fell two times, mistook three cars for his own and took ten minutes getting there.
“How could you even think of driving when you are so intoxicated?”, I wondered aloud. Then again, when so intoxicated one isn't thinking.